String art!

This year, I want to try something new each month. I need to branch out with new crafts and work my brain. This month, I chose string art. It was a challenge. The first board I bought wouldn’t hold any nails. I hammer them in, they fall out. Then the backing fell off. Disaster.

I decided to try again with a pine board.

First it was boring without any color. I decided staining would take to long so I just grabbed a tube of acrylic paint (paynes gray) and using a lot of water with a big brush, liberally applied it to the board.

Then it was the very tedious prep work. All the tutorials I read ahead of time didn’t warn me about this.

1st you put down your pattern.

I just used scotch tape to hold it down. It pulled my finish up a little, but the strings hid it.

Then you start nailing. I did put down a towel to protect my table.

And nailing,

And nailing.

I had to use tweezers to hold the nails as i could get them close enough otherwise. These were tiny finishing nails 1/2 inch long. Make sure your tweezers have a flat part to hold the nails. My other pair of tweezers didn’t have this and the nails kept slipping. However, my mom is still working on hers and she says needlenose pliers are the way to go.

Finally done with the prep. It took about two hours to hammer in all those nails.

The heart is off center for artistic reasons and to encompass the part of the state with my little town.

Using #10 white crochet thread, I started string.

This was the fun part. I would recommend counting the nails in your border and dividing that number by the ones in the heart so you know how many repeats per heart nail. It would probably give your finished piece more consistency. But …. it was finally the fun part so I eyeballed it.

Just keep stringing!

When I got all the way around, I tied off the thread. Glued it down with some epoxy 6000, and cut off the ends. While stringing, I found pushing the thread down close to the board kept my tension right.

Finished! I need to put a picture hanger on the back, but it’s all done.

Next month, I think I’m going to try cupcake flash drive keychains. It’s made from sculpey.